Africa

🇸🇳 Former Senegalese Prime Minister Idrissa Seck became the latest candidate to throw their hat into the ring to run for president in 2024. Seck, 63, has resigned from his role as head of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council, allowing him to contest next February’s election. He took the role after coming second in 2019’s presidential election with around a fifth of the vote. His party then formed a coalition with President Macky Sall’s party in government. Another former prime minister, Aminata Toure, and opposition leader Ousmane Sonko have already declared themselves as presidential candidates for 2024.

🇨🇮 Abidjan-based Carré d’Or has closed a deal to buy water brands Awa and Cristaline from French beer and soft drinks market leader, Groupe Castel. The transaction was valued at 11 billion CFA francs ($18.5 million), according to Groupe Castel’s financial advisors Enexus Finance. Carré d’Or, which is owned by the Ezzedine family in Côte d’Ivoire, is an agri-business and logistics business.

🇪🇹 Ethiopia’s government and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) were due to begin peace talks today in Tanzania. The rebel group, which is active in the country’s largest and most populous region, has been fighting the government for decades. Its grievances concern the alleged marginalization of the Oromo people in the Oromia region, where a third of the country’s population lives.

🇰🇪 Paul Mackenzie, the leader of a religious cult in Kenya, was arraigned in court after police discovered the bodies of more than 70 people buried in a mass grave on his 800-acre property in the coastal county of Kilifi. The pastor is alleged to have convinced members of his group to “meet their maker” by starving themselves. President William Ruto said “what is being witnessed in Shakahola is akin to terrorism.”

The amount of debt Kenya is looking to raise to refinance a eurobond whose principal payment is due in June 2024. But Kenya, like other countries with B-rated sovereign debt, has not had access to the eurobond market since the U.S. Federal Reserve started raising interest rates last year. This is now causing concern among major investors that Kenya could default on its debt amid a “funding squeeze” similar to other African countries, as noted by the IMF last week. This challenge has meant countries like Kenya are having to make the tough choice of whether to meet their domestic obligations, such as paying public workers, or risk defaulting on debt.

Sudan conflict threatens humanitarian crisis as thousands of Africans flee

THE NEWS

Fighting in Sudan threatens to cause a humanitarian crisis in the region.

Thousands have already fled the country in the wake of the nearly two-week conflict between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The two sides clashed over how to create a combined force as part of the transition to democratic rule. The World Health Organization estimates more than 400 people have already been killed and around 4,000 injured.

Sudan borders Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia, the Central African Republic, Eritrea, Libya and Egypt, most of which have experienced political instability in recent years. The United Nations said 20,000 people had fled to Chad.

Sudan’s neighbors are ill-equipped to absorb waves of refugees if the fighting evolves into a prolonged conflict, Peter Pham, former U.S. special envoy for Africa’s Great Lakes Region, told Semafor Africa. Sudan’s neighbors may be confronted with a “wave of humanity… but I don’t think any of them are prepared for this,” he said.

KNOW MORE

Nigerian authorities on Monday said they were working to evacuate some of the country’s 5,000 citizens stranded in Sudan. Meanwhile, Uganda said it had evacuated more than 200 of its nationals by getting them on to buses traveling via Ethiopia.

Zimbabwe has moved its nationals from Khartoum to the Port of Sudan from where transport arrangements were being made to get them back to the southern African country, a government spokesman said.

ALEXIS’S VIEW

The fight will likely leave thousands of people in need of food and shelter both inside the country and in neighboring countries.

“If this does devolve into a nationwide civil war…we’re looking at a regional humanitarian catastrophe [with] refugees flowing into Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia,” Ben Hunter, Africa analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, told me. “None of these are countries which have the infrastructure and money to look after these people,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced late on Monday a 72-hour ceasefire to enable safe evacuations and the provision of humanitarian assistance.

But even if the latest ceasefire holds — unlike previous attempts — prolonged fighting still seems likely. That’s because a range of outside actors — including Egypt, Libya, and Gulf states — are backing sides in the conflict to pursue their own strategic interests in the mineral-rich north-east African country. Their interventions will make it harder to end the fighting.

Blinken warned on Monday that Russia’s Kremlin-linked Wagner Group risked aggravating Sudan’s conflict.

Kenya’s top diplomat, speaking at the joint press conference, criticized the involvement of Middle Eastern powers. Alfred Mutua, Kenya’s cabinet secretary for foreign and diaspora affairs, called for “an African solution to African problems.”

“We can’t effectively do that if we are talking to groups that are being strengthened every day by the parties who believe that all they need to do is to fight to the end,” he said.

The self interest of various countries means Mutua’s plea is likely to fall on deaf ears. Meanwhile, Horn of Africa countries that could end up hosting refugees are on the brink of famine following five consecutive failed rainy seasons and supply chain shocks stemming from the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

Michael Shurkin, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council U.S. think tank, cautioned against assuming there would be a large-scale humanitarian crisis because international aid agencies already have a longstanding presence in the region.

“There are resources in place and mechanisms for dealing with mass displacement because there are NGOs everywhere,” said Shurkin. He compared the situation to the Syrian civil war that forced the creation of refugee camps in countries where aid agencies previously were not found, such as Turkey and Jordan.

“The infrastructure might already be in place” in areas hit by conflict in recent decades, he said, citing South Sudan, Chad and Sudan’s Darfur region.

THE VIEW FROM SOUTH SUDAN

Peter Ajak, a former South Sudanese government official, said the ability of the Sudanese to grow crops will be “substantially reduced,” which would affect both countries since South Sudan relies heavily on imports from its northern neighbor.

Ajak said the situation in South Sudan “was already horrible with millions of people in need of humanitarian assistance,” after years of intercommunal violence in different parts of the country. “Now, with the extra influx of population from the north I think it’s just going to be absolutely horrific.”

NOTABLE

• Khalifa Haftar, a warlord in neighboring Libya, organized the training of hundreds of RSF fighters in  urban warfare techniques  in the months leading up to the fighting, reports the UK’s Observer newspaper. It says the RSF’s leader previously sent mercenaries to fight in Libya alongside a militia led by Haftar, who controls much of eastern Libya.

The conditions for Starlink’s availability in South Africa have stirred debate after an opposition member of parliament accused the government of preventing the satellite internet service from operating in the country. Dianne Kohler Barnard of the Democratic Alliance alleged that the South African law requiring telecoms operators to offer 30% of equity to an empowerment group for Black people was an “archaic, irrational and ridiculous hurdle to progress” that will keep the country in the digital dark while neighbors Botswana and Mozambique gear up to access Starlink over the next year. South Africa’s communications regulator, known as ICASA, said Starlink has not applied for the licenses it needs to operate.

London-based telecommunications company Africell launched its mobile money service in Angola, extending a footprint that already includes Sierra Leone, DR Congo, and the Gambia. Africell has raked in 7 million subscribers since it started operations in Angola a year ago, and received a mobile money license in October from the banking regulator. But it is in a race to catch up with offerings from rivals, especially market leader Unitel, which floated mobile money in 2021 in partnership with Chinese manufacturer Huawei, and has 1.5 million users of the service.

Investments of $50 million and above into African startups last year were dominated by debt transactions rather than equity, a report from the African Private Capital Association (AVCA) shows. Debt deals within that ticket size accounted for a 9% share of all investments by volume but made up 61% of the total $5.2 billion raised by African startups last year. The trend of large funding rounds, including sizable portions of debt, has continued this year. South Africa’s Planet42 announced $100 million in February with only 15% of that being equity.

How local research has helped in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic

In June 2020, when then-Tanzanian president John “The Bulldozer” Pombe Magufuli declared the country COVID-free, only 509 cases and 21 deaths had been officially recorded and his government had stopped releasing COVID-19 data. A month earlier, he had denied the existence of the virus, urging citizens to disregard preventive measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing.

Magufuli, who trained as an industrial chemist before entering politics, instead promoted unproven forms of traditional African medicine, including a herbal tonic known as COVID-Organics, which he promised to import from Madagascar.

Some nine months later, President Magufuli had died. He passed away in March 2021 and, while it was never officially confirmed by the government, there was very strong speculation he had succumbed to the deadly virus.

Doctors and healthcare providers in Tanzania witnessed how government-fueled COVID misinformation wreaked havoc as they turned away COVID patients, even when the country’s intensive care facilities reached capacity. They could not openly speak out for fear of reprisal. Two years later, however, local researchers were leading efforts to undo the impact of misinformation and championed academic research aimed at both understanding the challenges and finding solutions.

Revamped efforts to fight the pandemic are now characterized not only by vaccination and awareness drives but also by partnerships with local African philanthropists to support COVID research.

Researchers from Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) in Dar es Salaam came together at the tail end of 2021, under the auspices of the family of former Prime Minister Salim Ahmed Salim. The family donated 100 million Tanzanian shillings ($42,626.77) in honor of their late mother, Amne Salim, to fund local COVID-19 research in a range of clinical, laboratory, biomedical, epidemiological, and socio-behavioral topics.

MUHAS’s Leonida Simon Kanyuma, who researched myths and perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines in Dar es Salaam and Kilimanjaro regions, said research showed just how much misinformation Tanzanians were getting from unreliable sources.

According to Kanyuma’s research, it was still relatively common for some adult respondents to deny the existence of COVID-19, while others were hesitant to leave their homes for fear of contraction. Some respondents believed that vaccine distribution was for the benefit of pharmaceutical firms from Western countries who were donating them to African governments.

— Muchira Gachenge

Evelyn Kaingu is the CEO of Lupiya, a Zambian startup that provides collateral-backed loans mainly to women and farmers. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris highlighted the company for being “innovative” during her visit to Zambia in April.

• The inclusion of commercial South African wine farms in fairtrade certification has become a contentious issue in the country. A new doctoral study, which focused on the experiences of farmworkers on these farms, set out to establish whether theory and practice align. According to the researchers, “the experiences of the farmworkers suggest that while the wine bottles leaving the farm might bear the Fairtrade label, the workers on these farms do not feel they are fairly treated.” South Africa’s wine industry, which employs nearly 300,000 people, has a sordid history of exploitation of Black and coloured workers by white farmers; a legacy it is struggling to distance itself from.
• A plan to build a rocket launch facility in Djibouti by the Chinese company Hong Kong Aerospace Technology Group, poses a legal threat and signals an opportunity to circumvent the international space governance regime, writes Carnegie scholar Benjamin Silverstein for Foreign Policy. Silverstein explains that a spaceport in Djibouti offers China the advantage of launching close to the equator which is more fuel-efficient than those from higher latitudes. But it would also mean that Djibouti, being a nonparty to the major outer space treaties, would be a good foreign country for China to “sidestep or outright reject rules it does not want to follow—likely without consequence,” posing a risk to other space players.

Ghanaian-born artist El Anatsui will be exhibiting his work at the prestigious Tate Modern art gallery’s Turbine Hall in London from October 10, 2023 to April 14, 2024. The Turbine Hall has hosted some of the world’s most celebrated contemporary art since its opening in 2000. Anatsui, best-known for his famed metallic sculptures constructed from recycled bottle tops and copper wire, has helped establish African art as a global force. The upcoming exhibition will reflect his greater body of work over a career spanning more than four decades. His highly experimental sculpting work, including the use of materials like wood, ceramics and found objects (most notably liquor bottle tops) speaks to “freedom, mobility, colonialism and environmental responsibility,” writes Amuche Nnabueze in The Conversation.

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— Yinka, Alexis, Marché, Alexander, and Muchira